Currently 46 Barnes & Noble stores are carrying gift of college gift cards in denominations of $25-$200. In mid October these cards will be available at all Barnes & Noble stores. Frequent Miler has a good post on why these cards are useful. These still have a purchase fee of $5.95, so they aren’t as useful as the cards that can be loaded up to $500 with the same fee. There used to be a number of cards that earned up to 5% cash back on bookstore purchases, but unfortunately that’s no longer the case. The Barnes & Noble card does earn 5% back on Barnes & Noble purchases though.
We are in 46 B&N stores right now and will be in ALL stores by mid October with the $25-$200 price point gift card! https://t.co/5kRy4T5eYK
— Gift of College (@GiftofCollege) September 10, 2018
Hat tip to reader Flame
According to Gift of College customer service, gift cards are no longer sold at Barnes & Noble
Can you use a B&N GC to buy GoC GCs?
No
OH SNAP!
I’ve been struggling to hit MSR on Altitude and vanilla Plat since Plastiq student loan payments don’t work. Very welcome news.
Also reading through the comments about LIII data, so not as good news, but at the least they’ve got 🔥 tweets: https://twitter.com/GiftofCollege/status/1042775839744647168
lol
Does anyone know if being a barnes and noble member for $25 a year gets 10% off gift cards like say maybe these? Can someone with a barnes and noble membership test that?
Also does anyone know if the happy teen cards that grocery stores are selling in the happy line for 10-15% during promotions can be used for buying giftofcollege cards at barnes and noble as well???
Buying at a grocery store with a credit card getting catagory bonuses the happy teen cards at 15% off face could make this a winner.
Did you test this?
Will reach out to a friend at University of Maryland after mid-october to see if the school bookstore (Barnes and nobles) carries these, could be lucrative with the Terps card (surprisingly) since it earns 10x at University stores.
Wondering if the Marvel Mastercard would work as entertainment at 3%? Even if it does still would only break even unless they start selling $500 cards.
If it does, then you should know that the Sony Card (now part of Capital One) offers 5% on entertainment.
BN the new WM…
A lot of university bookstores are Barnes & Noble. I have two kids in grad school in different states. Both of their bookstores are B&N.
That fee and value is exactly 2.9%.
2.975 is exactly 2.9.
Close enough to make no difference, and I get that I’m being pedantic, but don’t like the word “exactly” there.
You should divide by 205.95 instead of 200 because your credit card earns against the fee paid as well, which is 2.88%.
The only situation in which these could work is if you bought something nuts like $4000 of these cards in a single trip and paid with a barnes and noble 5% back credit card. If you could buy and liquidate that much in one trip you would only be making $80 cash back anyway.
Let me know when the $500 are available.